family dinner

Some phrases I heard a dinner tonight…
>please don’t stand up in your chair
>do not put your food on other people’s plates
>do not play with your food (as the child was putting shells and cheese on each fingertip)
>you don’t need another spoon, you already have two in your hand
>stop throwing your food
>stop throwing your peas back in the serving dish

Some things I saw at dinner tonight...
>two different children plugging their nose while eating peas (because they didn’t like them)
>one child spit a mouthful of chicken back onto his plate (for some unknown reason)
>peas flying onto different peoples plates and serving dishes
>a family of 8 (plus me) enjoying each others company

I like a little chaos at dinner. It's much better than eating by oneself in front of the TV.

I'm sure I've missed a few key points of the experience, but nonetheless...

If you didn’t guess, one of my foster families invited me to dinner, since I was there at dinner time. The children in their home both biological and foster are ages: 11, 9, 7, 2, 2, 1. Can you imagine? This woman makes me want to be a mom, for real. She is a super star (and a half).

also, one of the bio children (age 7) said "this is a good place for fosters becuase there is alot going on." (as i was swinging on a swing with 3 children and watching 2 others.) i thought that was really cute. not PC, but really cute.

Just for the record though, I think today's experience showed that I personally could not handle 6 children at once.

Oh and one more thing. On this day, it was the first time that one of the 2 year olds had pooped in the potty. Excitment and cheers could probably be heard around the neighborhood, as the family (ok maybe just the parents) celebrated this great accomplishement.